


A Cold Day in Hell

by axumun



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Immortality, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:47:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24416863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axumun/pseuds/axumun
Summary: There were days when revenge could wait. There were days when his fantasies of stomping down the cesspool of humanity and claiming his birthright brought no solace. It was on these days that he tried his hardest to die
Kudos: 11





	A Cold Day in Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings and tags are mostly a precaution.

Ardyn remembered the first time his demise seemed imminent, his veins constricting and prickling with heat, his mind scraping up what he was sure were his final thoughts. He remembered deciding between images of comfort, betrayal, dead-end vengeance...settling for all three, then finding that his thoughts continued to race.

They did stop, but only to give way to a single overwhelming force of darkness, overtaking him as a flood yet with pinpoint precision where he was most vulnerable. Pain, concealed with rage. Loss, overwritten with hatred. Tears, clouded by black smoke. 

  
>>>>>>>>

  
There were days when revenge could wait. There were days when his fantasies of stomping down the cesspool of humanity and claiming his birthright brought no solace. It was on these days that he tried his hardest to die.

  
In the beginning, his first ideas were imbued with nobility. What spectacle of a death would make history remember him with fondness and regret, make his people recognize what they'd done?

  
On one of the first such occasions, Ardyn had buried himself in a snowbank in the outlands of Nifilheim. Poetic, he had thought. Laying still and peaceful like the Glacean. Maybe he wouldn't be found for weeks, months, years...but surely his body would be preserved enough to be recognized. Remembered, revered.

  
Seventy-eight hours into this meditation, he assessed with a despondent pout that his Scourge kept his body temperature irritatingly regular, even radiating enough heat to melt the surrounding snow and make his clothes wet. So there he lay, wet and pouting and still frustratingly _alive_. He'd certainly have to try harder.

  
<<<<<<<<<<

  
Drowning wouldn't be the prettiest way to be discovered, but maybe that was for the better. Let some wretched tourist bloke fish up his remains from the Quay, the skin of his monstrous face bloating and rotting away, staring ahead forever and demanding recompense. 

  
He had left his beloved fedora and most of his layers neatly folded on the beach, a clue pointing to what would surely become a grisly message to all of humankind. Even the dying light of the sunset played painfully on his skin, just above the added discomfort and burning of his innate healing, but it would all be gone soon.

  
Hunched over by the pressure of holding the rather large rock over his back, grunting with the effort of trudging it through the shallows, his only respite was that it would all be worth it as he descended. Ardyn realized very quickly that he would not die of suffocation - only then realizing that he'd been breathing only out of habit rather than necessity - but there were plenty of other follies that could take him. 

  
Certainly the matter of his being would erode with enough time, maybe his bones would be crushed by the rock's weight, perhaps he would be devoured by deep-sea fish and scattered across the vastness. That would be sufficient, he thought, but wouldn't leave enough behind for his liking...

  
It took two weeks this time to accept that nothing whatsoever had changed. A thin ever-present black cloud kept even his fingertips from pruning, and no living being dared approach him even out of morbid curiosity.

  
It was at this moment, tearing himself with due effort from underneath his prison of choice, Ardyn accepted that a noble death was not befitting, or possible.

  
>>>>>>>>>>>

  
A memory floated to him from some long-forgotten kill, of an oft-neglected town nestled in the backwaters of Cleigne, full of enough of humanity's muddiest shallows for at least a night's light entertainment, if not the answer to his subject-less prayers. His most base instincts wondered if it would possible to fuck himself to death, though he had the common sense to guess that the other party would probably be the first to give out.

  
It was a settlement structured largely around a bar connecting a whorehouse, sidled by abandoned houses with breaking foundations, threaded together by shoddy pathways smelling of piss. So this was Lucis, Ardyn thought, snickering. The weakest link of his stolen kingdom. 

  
_A kingdom can only be as great as its most vulnerable people_ , he remembered saying once, eons ago, when the edges of his voice has no roughness, the tapestry of his humanity had no tearing bolts. So this was the best his brother could do.

  
He swallowed his death wish long enough to sit himself at a barstool, revelling in how out of place he felt, drinking in the dismayed side-eyes he received as the patrons bristled with fear. A long-lost tug at the reigns of control teased him as he ordered a triple shot of absinthe.

  
Ardyn knew better than to think that he could become inebriated, let alone suffer from alcohol poisoning, but something about feeling the slow burn of an unrefined liquor snake down his throat and into his belly, crawling into his bloodstream only to be evaporated by his Six-damned affliction was the closest thing to sating a hunger that he hadn't been able to feel for centuries.

  
The roughened bartender was unaffected enough, even being brave enough to engage in light conversation. This so moved Ardyn that he pushed back, the rusted-over dial of his charm turning smoothly up. 

  
"Surely you know," Ardyn inquired, words laced with honey and blood, "where I might procure something stronger?"

  
The young man looked as if he thought no one would ever ask, worry lines giving way to childish excitement. "Got someone you wanna kill?" he asked, voice perhaps not dropped low enough for such a morbid question.

  
"Ah," Ardyn batted back easily, "Always good to be prepared."

  
Agile hands uncovered a basket of small vials from behind a false bookshelf. It dismayed Ardyn that they were so small, but he knew that these supplements normally wouldn't need to come in bigger doses. Gloved fingers toyed with the brightly colored poisons, stolen memories supplying their specific purposes: which was easiest to slip into a meal, which ones caused the most agony and drawn-out pain, and which ones were silent.

  
"All of them," Ardyn chimed easily, procuring an impressive stack of rather dirty, crumpled bills. "Surely this'll do."

  
He couldn't help but wonder if he'd rescued an entire economy by the pleased bewilderment on the bartender's face, but couldn't bring himself to give it a second thought as he sauntered away unceremoniously, basket in his hands.

  
Some of the poisons tasted and smelled of nothing, and likewise made Ardyn feel no different. A select few others burned even stronger than the liquor, settling in his belly and drawing his sickness of hatred to the surface. This twisted drunkenness felt somehow befitting for a mortal.

  
The lovely sensation drowned out his lust for rest. Stronger than ever, he could only see the felled, bloodied remains of the Caelums. Nephews, cousins, and a brother, all kneeling to him, crying out desperate praises eons too late, dirtied faces twisted in anguish under his heels. It seemed so close now, only burning closer as more bottles were emptied, black smoke billowing from Ardyn's lungs with every habitual exhale as if his Curse could barely sustain his form through the intake of toxins.

  
What a devilish high, what a miraculous damnation that no other living being could ever touch...

  
Ardyn left the bottles behind like a trail of glass breadcrumbs. Imagining the horror of the bartender finding them was better than the prospect of waiting to see it himself. He had more exciting affairs to attend to.

  
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

  
From that early day on, bloodlust and deathlust married, unable to be separated. 

  
Most of the time, Ardyn had no desire to actually perish anymore; he inflicted pain only to see the future. A future sitting atop a throne of a hundred Lucian Kings' skulls, protected by moats of blood of their subjects that dared to neglect him. Every sting of a knife across his flesh that could leave no scar, every flash of fire and ice and lightning that he coated himself in only played his fantasy in higher definition behind his eyes.

  
Either he would damn the Prophecy by dying, or killing the Light that had yet to be born. Kill the world or die trying. No matter what, how could he lose?

  
The thrill became too much though, as it always does for even the most scrape-of-the-barrel mortal. The high became a distraction from fulfilling his own rightful Prophecy. So he tucked it away for time he had to kill, waiting for his pawns to fall into place. As much waiting as there'd been, as much of history as he'd wasted, he knew very well that there was still waiting to be done. Even Queens had to position themselves just so for a checkmate.

  
In the meantime, the rush of sensation drowned every dulled lining of torment, every memory that he had ever had a place or a people to belong to. He swallowed flames and tasted retribution, honed it to relay it back at his enemies tenfold. Ever growing stronger, ever mapping the plan, ever remaining patient.

  
On the day that the One True King was born, Ardyn held a dagger to his own throat, pushing with slow, agonizing control. Too slow to draw blood, but deep enough to see the newborn's adult face pressed into the dirt, asking for mercy. Pressing again, he could see the same King rending him to delicious oblivion, and damn him, Ardyn couldn't decide which one felt better.

  
Only waiting would tell him.


End file.
